At my old friend Terry’s suggestion we trekked north out of Winnipeg into the Interlake so named due its location between Lakes Manitoba and Winnipeg. Our destination was the red-sided garter snake dens just north of Narcisse on Hwy #17 though neither of us are particularly fond of snakes. It was the phenomenon we were looking for.

The day was cloudless and warm, a perfect day to escape the Hive. Immediately upon our arrival a friendly and informative snake lady who works for the site gave us some information about the most active dens – today it was 2 and 3. There are four dens. The late spring has put the emergence of the snake population back about a month, she explained, so we can expect snakes to still emerge for the rest of May into June. She mentioned the wood ticks are out so stay on the trail. I just did a tick check of my body and turned up none. The limestone trails to the dens are an easy hike across flat land and completely wheelchair accessible. The viewing areas sets the visitor above and apart from the dens below, well out of each other’s way. Snakes moving in the dry pit created a constant low rustle.

Although the snakes haven’t eaten since last summer, their first imperative is biological – to mate. For that purpose male garter snakes wait to the mouth of the den for females to emerge. They throng the female creating a passionate mating tangle that moves across the ground, up the side of the pit then tumbles back down. Today there were small clusters, no large mating balls of hundreds of snakes.

We passed two school buses of kids coming from visits to the snake dens and there were at least a dozen cars in the lot. But there was no crowd, just the happy, enthralled voices of kids discovering the snakes.

As Terry pointed out, we seldom get to see the ancient pivotal moment in another creature’s life when they are governed by The Old Rules of procreation. We found our phenomenon.

Criddle/Vane House Guided Tour 3:55

Click pic to take my 3:55 tour of the 14-room house which was destroyed by arson in 2014.

Stone Alone out on Highway 21 2:16

To explore this house inside and out click pic

Portals to the Past 4:18

Beside the road, the haunted souls of the long gone find solace and sanctuary in tumbledowns, neglected and abandoned places that once danced with the rhythms of lives but now succumb and succumb. Click pic for 4:17 video

Mission Statement

As a professional writer, I shall honour the strategy that informs my client’s audience in a voice they trust and a style they understand.
As a personal writer, I shall honour the strategies defined by the resourcefulness of my mind, the waves of my heart and the wiles of my spirit.

Just This by Ken Wilber

In the heart of Emptiness there is a mysterious impulse, mysterious because there is actually nothing in the heart of Emptiness (for there is nothing in Emptiness, period). Yet there it is, this mysterious impulse, the impulse to…create. To sing, to shine, to radiate; to send forth, reach out and celebrate; to sing and shout and walk about; to effervesce and bubble over, this mysterious exuberance in the heart of Emptiness.

Emptiness empties itself of emptiness, and thus becomes Full, pregnant with all worlds, a fruition of the infinite impulse to play, hidden in the heart of your own deepest Self. If you rest in the Witness, settle back as I-I, and look very carefully for the Looker – if you turn within right now and try to see the Seer – you won’t see anything at all, for you cannot see the Seer. All you will find is a vast Freedom and Emptiness, in which the entire Kosmos is now arising. Out of the pure Emptiness that is your deepest suchness, all worlds arise. Your own impulse of looking has brought forth the universe, and here it resides in the vastness of all space which is to say, in the purity of your own primordial awareness. This has been obvious all along; this you have known all along. Just this, and nothing more, just this.

from "One Taste"

My Mission Statement

As a professional writer, I shall honour the strategy that informs my client’s audience in a voice they trust and a style they understand.
As a personal writer, I shall honour the strategies defined by the resourcefulness of my mind, the waves of my heart and the wiles of my spirit.